sitates the treatment of the subject-failure for a year as
equivalent to a failure for each of the two semesters. Two of the
schools involved in this study (comprising about 11 per cent of the
pupils) recorded grades only at the end of the year. It is quite
probable that the marking by semesters would actually have increased
the number of failures in these schools, as there are many teachers who
confess that they are less willing to make a pupil repeat a year than a
semester.

By employing this unit of failure, the failures in the different
subjects are regarded as comparable. Since only the academic and
commercial subjects are considered, and since they are almost uniformly
scheduled for four or five hours a week, the failures will seem to be
of something near equal gravity and to represent a similar amount of
non-performance or of unsatisfactory results. There were also a few
failures included here for those subjects which had only three hours a
week credit, mainly in the commercial subjects. But failures were
unnoted when the subject was listed for less than three hours a week.

There are certain other elements of assumption in the treatment of the
failures, which seemed to be unavoidable. They are, first, that failure
in any subject is the same fact for boys and for girls; second, that
failures in different years of work or with different teachers are
equivalent; third, that failures in elective and in required subjects
are of the same gravity. It was found practically impossible to
differentiate required and elective subjects, however desirable it
would have been, for the subjects that are theoretically elective often
are in fact virtually required, the electives of one course are
required in another, and on many of the records consulted neither the
courses nor the electives are clearly designated.

3. THE SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE FIELD COVERED

As any intensive study must almost necessarily be limited in its scope,
so this one comprises for its purposes the high school records for
6,141 pupils belonging to eight different high schools located in New
York and New Jersey. For two of these schools the records for all the
pupils that entered are included here for five successive years, and
for their full period in high school. In two other schools the records
of all pupils that entered for four successive years were secured. In
four of the schools the records of all pupils who entered in February
and September o